About the Author

I believe the old saw that “truth is stranger than fiction” is usually wrong. I hope, I want, good fiction to take revenge on the commonplace and everyday repetition of truth and reality that we all must live with. I want us to be transported to a reality that is imagined. Possible, yes, but imagined and more fascinating than day to day life usually affords. More than anything, I want the reader to enjoy this entertaining confection of a novel which seeks to offer a pleasant reading experience by telling a good story in clear and interesting language.

May I take a moment to offer three small notions of what might loosely be called philosophy?

Never pass up a chance to celebrate life, preferably with a glass of good wine. Our stay is brief. Meet the hard times and challenges that will inevitably come– with courage.

If bought with bravery, celebrate failure as well. Lose not your sense of the frailty and fatality of human existence, but love well the small victories that ennoble it.

The complete mystery of time’s passing and the advancement of age are impossible to explain but must be endured. How does all that happen? Think about it if you must, then move on to give it your best.

Mini-bio

Good student and multi-sport athlete in high school at a small town in southwest Missouri, then early college and baseball at Missouri State University in Springfield; transferred to seek journalism degree at J-school, University of Missouri in Columbia with a minor in German; at graduation, received an internship to “Die Welt”, a world-wide and highly regarded German newspaper; wrote features in English and translated them to perfect classroom German, then when editors turned copy into German “journalese” would often have to consult dictionary to see what on earth I’d written; “Die Welt” paid well so stayed for many months and tramped alone all over Europe; draft board finally insisted I come home to be drafted or go to jail; only alternative in those days was to flee to Canada; chose to be drafted and served tour in Vietnam as an interrogator of prisoners of war, specializing in the German language; unsurprisingly, prisoners all spoke Vietnamese so we had to rely on our translators to help unearth intelligence; as the saying goes, Army intelligence pairs two mutually exclusive words.

Back to the university to complete graduate classes on a master’s in journalism and managed to sell several free-lance, non-fiction articles; started writing features for the Columbia Tribune and was soon made news editor.

Left the Tribune to buy a small petroleum distribution company and build it up over the next 12 years into a sizable company, which I sold and became a hotel owner and restaurateur; sold those and started a modest construction/design company which eventually segued into ownership of commercial real estate, which I have today.

All those business years I would occasionally work on short stories just for fun and to keep writing something. When one was abandoned (no fiction is ever finished, just abandoned) it went into a desk drawer and I’d start another. My daydreams and general musings about this sasquatch story just would not go away, so eventually I began to work on it in earnest, as time permitted. Time to work on the novel was scarce, but little by little a first draft was born. After several drafts and rewrites, the manuscript was “abandoned” and ready to be printed and peek out into the world. You are invited to try “The Sasquatch Murder/A Love Story” and take your own peek. I hope and believe you will find it a good read.